Very flexible options for hybrid deployments using an Exchange server on the LAN in concert with Exchange online

For smaller businesses, Microsoft is abandoning the small business product which included and Exchange server. The offering for this market is a combination of Windows Server Essentials for local LAN file and print services and Active Directory, along with Exchange Online hosted service or Office 365. The hosted services run on the same server software and provide the same features.

These services are right for very small organizations and widely-distributed, highly mobile workgroups. I do have concerns with aggregating mail for thousands of companies into a large high-profile target for hackers. There are other hosted options (smaller hacker targets) besides Microsoft’s offering, and for some situations an in-house server still makes good sense.